


Tears from the Sun

by Golden_Moon_Huntress



Series: The Debt Owed [4]
Category: The Gifted (TV 2017)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-09
Updated: 2020-08-10
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:21:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,839
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25795045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Golden_Moon_Huntress/pseuds/Golden_Moon_Huntress
Summary: Don’t be afraid. The shadows know us.
Relationships: Andy Strucker & Lauren Strucker
Series: The Debt Owed [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1781644
Kudos: 13





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by My Eyes from Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. I think the song works pretty well for Lauren and Andy.

Lauren felt like she was seeing her arrival at the underground through someone else’s eyes. Her body didn’t feel like hers. She could see Andy knelt in front of her, but she could see someone else as well, a memory of the boy superimposed over her brother’s face.

“Lauren?”

“Andreas,” the girl whispered, reaching for him as the pain radiated out from her chest. “Don’t leave me.”

“I’m here,” he said, his voice sounding like it was coming through water.

“We should have destroyed them,” she muttered, drawing a bloodied hand down his cheek. “We should have destroyed them all.”

“We will,” he replied, and then there was a sharp pain across her face. Someone cried out. There was another sting of pain, and a different voice, one she knew.

“Lauren come on! Snap out of it!”

She snapped back to reality, and the image she was seeing over Andy’s faded. “Andy?”

“Lauren?”

“It’s me.”

She rubbed at her cheek, which stung where she guessed he had hit her.

“Sorry,” he muttered. She shook her head.

“No, it- It’s alright. I’m alright.”

He wrapped his arms around her, and for a moment she was the girl again, her arms wrapped around Andreas, and then it faded and she was rocking back on her heels in the basement.

X X X  
  


The people here had nothing.

They were guilty of being mutants and for that they had been driven from their homes and hunted down like animals.

It made her feel sick.

It made her feel even worse to know she and Andy had made everything even harder for mutants everywhere.

And when she slept at night she dreamt of being the girl and crushing her enemies like the insects they were.

 _You can do that now,_ the girl whispered inside her head, _we can do that now. He’s here with us._

X X X

She and Andy pushed their thin bunks together to form a slightly bigger double bunk and slept curled up in each other’s arms.

Lauren knew there were people that whispered about that, but they didn’t care too much.

X X X

Sometimes she wondered if things would be better if she had just told her parents about all this back when it started. About her powers, about the girl, about her being a mutant.

Sometimes she wondered what her dad would have done if he’d known before Andy destroyed half their school and then she and Mr Strucker blew up a street.

She wanted to think that he would have accepted her, that he would have helped her with all this, but sometimes she wondered.

 _  
_ X X X

When she was five, Lauren wanted to be a policewoman.

When she was seven, she wanted to be a vet.

When she was ten years old, she wanted to be a nurse like her mom.

Now she was seventeen and just wanted to live.

And the other girl inside her wanted to be a serial killer.

Go figure.

X X X

The only news on the radios was about mutants being hunted down and arrested across the country.

Andy found her on the roof as she stared out into the distance, her arms folded across her legs. “Hey.”

“Hey yourself.”

He sat beside her and followed her gaze to the horizon. “You alright?”

She shrugged.

“You can talk to me you know.”

She rested her chin on the heel of her hands and swung her legs back and forth off the edge of the building. “They’re calling us terrorists.”

“I mean, it is a secret underg-”

“Not the Underground Andy, us specifically. Me and you.”

“Oh.”

“And it’s not working Andy, all this with Dreamer. It’s not helping. She’s still there, the girl, Andrea, and it’s tearing me apart.”

Andy reached for her hand, stopped. “Remember what you told me? Keep fighting it.”

 _  
_ X X X

But what if she was too tired for that now?

  
X X X

The people here had nothing.

They were guilty of being mutants and for that they had been driven from their homes and hunted down like animals.

It made him angry.

It made him feel even worse to know he had made everything even harder for mutants everywhere.

It was all his fault for lashing out, for bringing the gym down, for amping up Sentinal Services.

Every time a young child was led into the Headquarters by a frightened, frantic looking parent, Andy felt even worse.

 _  
_ X X X

 _  
_ Dreamer couldn’t stop the flashes, and she couldn’t take away the feelings of being another person, but she could remove the memories once they were there, which helped.

Lauren was getting brighter with every day that passed, bolder and more confident, more like the Lauren she had been three years ago, before all this started for her. Sometimes though, underneath it all, Andy could still see flashes of the other girl, buried deep but still there.

It scared him.

He could still remember her laughing in Mr Strucker’s sitting room, the look on her face as she choked him in the street, the stranger behind her eyes as they arrived at the Underground Headquarters.

X X X

 _  
_ “-investigators still believe-”

“- a deliberate attack on this quiet neighbourhood-”

“- old man, I never would have-”

“-something wrong with him-”

Andy leant over and switched the radio Lauren was sat in front of off. She glanced at him and reached out to turn it back on again. He caught her wrist. “Stop beating yourself up. It wasn’t you, out there, with Mr Strucker. It wasn’t you.”

“It sure felt like me.”

“Come on, me and some of the other kids are going out to practise with our powers. You should join us.”

She gave the radio one last glance and followed him out.

X X X

It was a good afternoon.

X X X

Lauren got better.

They practised and trained in the yard, sometimes together and sometimes opposing each other, blowing holes in the old walls and brick – and every time he used his powers he caught a flash of using them in a different situation (tearing apart soldiers, tearing apart cars, buildings, tanks) and they went straight to Dreamer after every session.

X X X

Sometimes he wondered if it would have been different if he’d tried to talk to Lauren sooner. If he’d known about hers, maybe he wouldn’t have gone ballistic when his manifested.

X X X

 _  
_ Another human parent came through with their mutant child, a little boy with scaled green skin and a forked tongue. Their own mom befriended her immediately, and Lauren took the little boy, Daniel, under her wing for the short period of time they were there.

“They drove us out of our home,” his mom whispered one night as she stared at her bowl of soup. “They were going to lynch him.”

Daniel cuddled a little closer to Lauren and Andy tried to ignore just how close he was to her.

X X X

They left two days later, and another three days after that a father arrived with his teenage daughter, who had long stripes down her face and arms and a flexible red tail.

“What’s your name?” Andy asked.

She gave him a shy smile.

“Belle.”

X X X

Of course, Daniel and Belle were counteracted by all the teens and children who arrived on their own, frightened and bruised and bloody, abused just for being mutants.

X X X

  
When they put together the plan to rescue their dad, Mr Strucker, and this Polaris from Sentinal Services custody Andy only looked at Lauren.

She smiled and it was all her.

  
X X X

They rescued their dad and he held them tighter than he had in a long time.

Lauren remembered sitting on an overly large armchair as a man in military uniform shouted at them in a language she should have known.

X X X

 _  
_ Some days they didn’t talk.

Some days they didn’t need to talk.

It was like there was knowledge shared between them, wordless and instinctive, flowing from Lauren to him and from him to Lauren.

They didn’t need to talk.

X X X

Some days though, he could feel the craving inside him.

He wanted the power he had felt when he held Lauren’s hand in the park, the magnetic hum that was just that little bit more when he was close to Lauren.

He looked at her, and he knew she felt it too.

X X X

She couldn’t stop fighting.

She could never stop fighting.

But she was tired – so tired.

Sometimes – just sometimes – she thought it might be easier to let herself be the girl.

She wouldn’t have to fight anymore, and the girl would know what to do. She should have known what to do when they were faced with Sentinal Services in the tunnel, when they were rescuing their dad-

But it was easier with Dreamer. Oh, the girl – Andrea – she still talked sometimes – on top of the list of things she didn’t tell Andy – but she was quieter now, much quieter. She didn’t have to constantly fight between what was her and what was the girl, because Dreamer got rid of the girl’s memories as soon as they came, so they were never there to get mixed in with her own.

Except they kind of already were.

And sometimes when she spoke to her dad she expected him to answer in German.

X X X

They had to move the beds apart because of the craving demand when they were lying there trying to sleep. Andy buried his face in his thin pillow and told himself it was Lauren, it was his _sister_ , and he wasn’t meant to think about her like that!

X X X

She woke screaming for Andreas.

A shield bubble exploded out from her bed, sending everything too close to her flying.

Andy was there at her side in a heartbeat, panicked, catching at her arms as she flailed and struggled against the ratty blanket. “Lauren!”

“Andreas!”

“It’s Andy, I’m here, I’m here.”

She gasped for air, clinging to him, sobbing, the vivid image of her bloody hands and the ghost of pain in her stomach still fresh in her mind.

“Don’t leave me,” she whispered.

“I won’t. I won’t.”

X X X

They lay awake together for most of the night until it was a more reasonable time for him to take her to see Dreamer.

It happened again three nights later.

X X X

He thought she was getting better.

She was supposed to be getting better!

Part of him – a deep buried part – wondered what she was meant to be getting better _from_.

Andy tried not to think about that part, but it was still there.

The nightmares seemed to stop after about a week and a half – or maybe Lauren just stopped screaming when she woke up.

Some of the others were starting to get annoyed by that.

Andy wanted to punch them right in their judgemental faces.

At least Lauren had stopped flicking back and forth between herself and not-Lauren.

X X X

Esme tipped the scales again.

The girl spoke, like she hadn’t done in weeks.

Lauren had always known she was still there – always known she would _always_ be there – but now she was _loud_ again.

She thought _like Emma but not Emma._

She thought _what’s the connection._

She thought _how very fascinating._

She thought _is she here for the Club?_

She thought and thought so loud until all Lauren wanted to do was scream and have her head back to herself again.

X X X

The night after Esme arrived Lauren woke screaming again.

Esme was hot, but something inside him said if she was going to be causing his sister pain and distress then she had to go.

And then he wondered where that thought came from.

And Lauren woke screaming the next night too.

 _  
_ X X X

Sometimes he wondered how she dealt with this for three years.

At least he had Dreamer to help.

Lauren had fought with this for three years.

How did she cope?

Sometimes he wondered whether she did.

He remembered her in the car, muttering and whispering to herself, shaking and pale.

He remembered her at Mr Strucker’s, wild and angry and _not-Lauren._

He remembered her after that day in the park, sick and confused.

He remembered all the days he had sat drawing and gaming in his room while crashes and bangs like breaking plates or falling weights came from behind Lauren’s closed door.

All he could do was hold her when she woke and try to ignore the image of another woman behind his eyes.

X X X

It felt like she was breaking apart.

There was her, Lauren, and there was the girl, Andrea-

Except they weren’t, not really.

There was one person, LaurenAndrea-

Except they weren’t, not really.

Every time she remembered being Andrea she got Dreamer to take it away, but the girl was still there.

Every time she closed her eyes she remembered being someone else.

Every time she fell asleep she dreamt of the atrocities.

Every time she woke up she felt the need for the power and the need for him.

X X X

And when the Underground leaders stood there and asked for their help attacking the Trask labs, they only looked at each other.

Because maybe this time they could do some good with these powers.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Second entry to this fic. This one was based on Lovers on the Sun by David Guetta.

They clasp hands. For the first time in decades, the golden glow of the Fenris force lights up the air, illuminating the cell around them.

It feels good. They are power made human, flames and force and fury. These humans are going to pay for daring to imprison them, and this scientist is going to pay for daring to try and give them orders.

They are all going to pay.

They would make sure of it.

And then there is nothing but pain and they are screaming and on the floor, but they can’t lose each other, not again.

Not ever.

These humans are going to pay.

He snarls at the screen.

“Incredible,” says the scientist.

As if they could measure their power with science.

X X X

Esme and her sisters might have freed them from imprisonment, but they had no right to stand there giving them orders.

‘Time to go boys and girls’ indeed!

She accepts her brother’s hand.

They could tear down buildings like this, destroy festivals and those that thought they could stop them.

No one could stop them.

Bit by bit, everything around them is ripped apart into non-being. It seems slower than she felt it should be, as though the process is being delayed. The bus disintegrates into pale ash, the effect creeping out to the nearby guard buildings and tearing into the mutants closest to them.

Some of them are screaming.

They are collateral, unfortunate, but between them and their target.

Esme and her sisters flee.

And then something slams into their backs, a heavy weight that breaks their hands apart and throws them forwards into woodland instead of cracked concrete like they expected.

Something in him lapses back into non-being.

“Clarice!” comes a man’s voice. She reaches for him again but he pulls away – why would he do that why? - and another woman somewhere is screaming ‘Don’t let them touch!’

It lapses in her too.

They stare at each other.

X X X

When things went wrong at Fairburn they reach for each other as the power wakes under their skin, hungry, craving, roaring and furious. She’s only angrier when he’s knocked unconscious, and for a moment she remembers laying in his arms as he lays in hers, bleeding from her chest as he bleeds from his head.

They’ll pay.

X X X

The power craves.

The power craves as they talk, the power craves as they resist it, the power craves as they remember and desire and crave.

And when the time comes they exchange looks and know each other well enough to know the decision the other one has made.

“Maybe we can do some good this time round.”

The power craves.

They crave.

They can’t go on alone.

X X X

They flee unseen amongst the ashes to join their parents and go on to the Way Station.

That’s where Polaris and Esme find them a week later.

They’re rebuilding the Hellfire Club.

They smile and stand to join them amidst the protests from those around them.

They’re sated.

For now, anyway.

Soon enough they will be craving again, though not as badly as when they were without each other.

That was like hell on Earth.

X X X

As always, the Club has found some big fancy building to make into their Headquarters.

It’s much better than the Underground, though they can remember living in forests and fields, diving into the tiniest piece of shelter for some reprieve from the rain.

They shower together in their private bathroom and take turns spraying each other with the shower head as though they are six years old.

**LOVERS ON THE SUN**

They were burning up.

They were alight with power, awash with the golden light.

They had a way out, an escape, and they took it. Their enemies crumbled to dust and the building came apart around them.

They woke in the morning, twined in each other, limbs tangled together, but they had each other and that was all they needed. She gazed into his eyes and he gazed into hers, remembering that terrible power and the sensation of being one being, two melded into one.

X X X

Choices stretched out in front of them.

They could have given up, they could have given in, they could have slipped up and been shot.

They could have succumbed to the elements, fallen asleep and never woken up.

(what a change that would have made to the future, butterly wings echoing throughout the decades)

They made their choice.

They kept moving, fleeing the devastation behind them.

_History would remember their names._

X X X

When the Club found them a year and a half later, ragged and filthy, they vowed never to have to run like that again.

They would practise, and they would train, and they would stand and fight.

Which was exactly what they did six weeks later, and those that had once hurt them, hunted them, were ash beneath their feet.

They could have done a thousand other things, but they did this instead, because if the humans refused to accept them, hunted them down like animals, they would turn the tables and wipe them off the the face of the planet.

The days and the sunlight hours, those belonged to the Club and their desires, do this, don’t do that, no it’s not fun to slaughter fifty people damn spoilsports-

But the nights…

The nights were theirs, and theirs alone.

The best feeling of all was being wrapped in each others’ arms while the golden light danced around them and roared out to destroy their enemies. It was war on the battlefield during the day and war in the bedroom at night. And yet when their limbs intertwined they saw through the same eyes, breathed with the same lungs, thought with the same mind, loved with the same heart.

It was said they weren’t team players, that they’d turn coat eventually, that the only thing they truly cared about was each other, and even then it was out of necessity and not love.

Two of those things were true.

One was false.

X X X

It felt good.

They hadn’t felt it – or hadn’t noticed - the first time, too busy panicking, but the more they used it the more they wanted to use it. The golden light flooded up their arm, roaring under their skin, roaring and destructive.

Every time they linked hands they hated letting go.

They had to keep on fighting.

They had more power in one finger than these puny humans had in their entire bodies.

They were going to crush them.

The battle went on, and all they could do was cling to each other and enjoy the ride.

One day this world would belong to them.

(and if not theirs, his, the baby that slept in his cradle in the next room, the symbol of their legacy)

**LOVERS ON THE SUN**

They spend their days training, against dummies and brick walls, with each other, with Polaris and Bulk and Fade, but the nights, the nights are theirs, and they have a city to own and explore and a private bedroom to play in.

They’re underage – it’s been a long time since they were that – but the Club gets them IDs that say they’re older, old enough, and she takes him clubbing. It’s his first time – here, anyway – but she’s been before, sneaking out with friends and a false ID back in what they used to call home.

They get hammered, enough just to forget, just for a bit, and fall in and out of a taxi to get back to Headquarters, laughing and tripping over their own feet.

Reeva isn’t impressed.

Damn spoilsport.

X X X

Almost all their hours are allocated to training, to getting stronger, until at last they reduce the training room to rubble three months in and collapsing, panting, in a heap as Sage gapes at them from the observation deck. They roll apart, arms wrapped together, laughing like the world is ending.

Reeva sends them on their first mission the next day, to attack a prison transport of mutants, to free them and incite a riot.

Just like the good old days, he jokes, and then she tells them she wants minimal casualties.

You’re no fun, she complains, and he laughs as they leave the room.

X X X

They tear into the van convoy and there are men screaming and mutants screaming and bullets flying and one of them comes painfully close to her.

She shields it and he rips his head off.

(they give her her minimal casualities)

X X X

The Frosts drive the truck back and they lie over the back bench, tangled in each other’s arms, her hands in his hair and his under her shirt, absent-mindedly checking for any hidden injuries.

She tells him she’s fine, but he won’t believe it until he’s seen every inch of her and knows neither of them is going to be left alone again.

X X X

Reeva’s not happy – Reeva’s never fucking happy – and tells them off like children when they arrive back, falling from the truck like they’re drunk again.

You got your minimal casualities, he tells her, his sister’s arm wrapped around his shoulders.

Reeva huffs.

She didn’t know what she was letting herself in for.

X X X

The power craves.

They sleep twined together that night, and it pulses, golden bright, in their chests.


End file.
